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What’s better than birthday cake? Zombie birthday cake, obviously. I have few domestic talents, but this is a cake that even the most clueless chef can tackle with ease. Mistakes? No such thing. This zombie rises up out of a grave of chocolate cake, frosting, and crumbled cookies.

smear green gel food coloring and some of the black frosting on the cake topper to create a zombie look

separate the creme filling from the cookie shell of the Oreos and crush the remaining cookies

arrange larger broken cookies in a circle around the zombie to suggest that she is rising from her grave

sprinkle smaller cake and cookie crumbs around the cake and into the frosting on the foil

adorn with gummy worms

stick in eyeballs or other plastic creepy things for atmospheric effect

cover a cardboard box in foil, and decorate to create a headstone (with happy birthday wishes) for your zombie’s grave

That’s it! It’s easy enough to do the same thing with cupcakes. We used mini bundt pans and small cake toppers for these little treats. To create small headstones, we used the creme filling leftover from the Oreos to frost mini-chocolate bars and then decorated with gel icing. No birthday for a while? There’s always Halloween. Ah, heck, who needs an excuse? These are good for the zombie geek any day of the year.

Cupcakes are hard to resist. Those tasty bits of cake with frosting and colorful little sprinkles on top seem to beckon with their cheery, sweet goodness. As a Mom, I almost always have them on my to do list for a party or a bake sale. Sometimes I bake the quickest thing I can manage, but it’s way more fun to get creative and bring something no one expects. I’m constantly on the lookout for new and creative ways to decorate, and now there’s a great new book from the authors of Hello, Cupcake! that provides a whole bunch of ideas that will keep me happily experimenting for months.

Cupcakes, Cookies & Pie, Oh, My! is the latest release from the authors of Hello, Cupcake! and What’s New, Cupcake? and this time, they’ve decided to include more than just their famous cupcake designs. Using ingredients like cereal, pretzels, cookies and marshmallows, they will help you transform all sorts of desserts into tasty works of art. There are cakes, cookies, and even cereal treat creations and all of them require nothing more exotic than what you’d find at your local grocery store.

You can turn a pound cake into an adorable puppy, or rice cereal treats into colorful little houses. There are ideas in here for Father’s Day, birthdays and just for fun like a cheesecake that looks like a plate of nachos. And, since these are the cupcake people, there are lots of new cupcake ideas, too. You can make fancy high-heeled shoes, or purses or even frogs.

Emotipops from Cupcakes, Cookies & Pie, Oh, My!

I particularly liked the recipes for cake pops. It can be a challenge bringing a whole cake to events where cutting and serving is not simple and guests have to juggle plates. Cake pops take care of the problem by serving a beautifully decorated piece of cake right on a fork. I’m thinking the Emotipops, with all sorts of emoticons on brightly frosted circles of cake, are going to be next on my to-bake list.

Each recipe comes with detailed instructions that will help even the most novice of bakers complete their projects. There are also lots of color photos of both the finished product and the steps it takes to get there so that you don’t have to guess about just what things should look like as you’re working. If you are looking to save a little time, there are even no-bake recipes that call for frozen pound cake so you don’t have to turn on the oven.

Cucpakes, Cookies & Pie, Oh, My! by Karen Tack and Alan Richardson is a fantastic addition to the Hello, Cupcake! series. If you’re looking for some creative new ideas with step-by-step instructions and ingredients you can easily find, then this is the book for you!

The Wicked Witch of the East: a character that you see very little of… just the legs, in fact. This is my nod to Wizard of Oz this Halloween season. Everything on this cupcake is delicious!

What you’ll need:

Cupcakes

Green frosting

Wilton grass tip

White chocolate

Chocolate chips

Graham crackers

Thin pretzel stick

Red gumdrop

Yellow gumdrop

2 wooden skewers

A little bit of white fondant

Directions:

1. Take a graham cracker and split it in half. Taper the sides of both squares very slightly with a knife. Then cut only one of the squares in fourths (horizontally).

2. Dip the graham crackers fourths into white chocolate and drain off the excess. Freeze the “house boards”. Spread white chocolate on the other graham cracker square, then attach the “boards”.

3. Cut out a graham cracker triangle shape for the roof of your house, then dip it in chocolate. Freeze it, then apply some melted chocolate to the back of it and attach it to your house. Freeze it. (This is the back side view.)

4. For the window, flatten a yellow gumdrop, then cut a square.

5. Using melted white chocolate, attach your window. Then use melted chocolate to pipe the window panes. Finally, dip a pretzel stick (that is the right size for your windowsill) in white chocolate. After freezing it, attach it at the bottom of your window with white chocolate.

6. I like a distressed look on my “house boards” so I smear melted chocolate on them and rub it in to get that antique kind of look (totally optional). Your house should be done now. Always keep it chilled or in the freezer.

8. Insert skewers that are trimmed down so that they insert complelety in the cupcake and are tall enough to support the “house”. Lean the house up against it and then reinforce it by piping frosting over the back of the skewers and the house (at the base). Chill it.

9. For the legs, cut a red gumdrop in half, then mold it to look like shoes. Then roll out two fondant ropes that are the length you want the legs. Put melted chocolate in a plastic bag that has a small tip cut and pipe lines on the legs. Using that same chocolate attach the “shoes”. Chill or freeze.

10. Place the legs on the frosting in front of the house. The frosting will secure the legs in place. These cupcakes should always remain chilled. They are suprisingly sturdy and secure once the frosting is chilled. (And by sturdy, I mean I dropped one of mine and it was totally okay.)

A new little shop has just opened which combines my love for all things geek and my love for baking. The site is called I’m With Cupcake and it has some super geeky cooking items. While perusing their online offerings I came up with a few of my favorite things:

I used to spend hours playing PacMan at our local pizza parlor when I was a kid. I even went so far as to make an ode to the yellow guy in pancake. Now you can use a silicone PacMan to protect your fingers by gobbling up heat. The inside of his mouth even has impressions of the game board. This would make a perfect housewarming present.

Image I'm With Cupcake

Another handy item I found are these Chimpsticks. When we have Japanese food, Geekette always wants to use chop sticks but has yet to master them. Chimpsticks are attached at the top so you don’t have to worry about holding them together and they have flattened paws at the end to help grip the food. Genius!

Image I'm With Cupcake

Remember cassette tapes? While they have pretty much gone the way of the dinosaurs, someone has found a new use for them: a headphone spooler. These are so retro and would make a great gift for someone who has everything.

Image I'm With Cupcake

My favorite item, and something I am definitely adding to my wish list, is the Ninjabread Men Cookie Cutters. These are awesome! You can do ninjas for birthday parties or karate chopping gingerbread men for the holidays.

Image via Flickr user snekse

I’m With Cupcake is just getting started but given all of the cool, geeky things they have now I can’t wait to see what else they come up with. My daughter loves Karate Kid and I can see my son wanting a ninja party at some point so I for one will be getting a set of those cookie cutters. Drop by and check them out.

Since I grew up in a house with two parents who are educators, I have always appreciated how difficult it is to be a teacher. You spend a lot of your at home time grading papers and making up lesson plans. I always like to show my daughter’s teachers that we recognize the great job they do and make them something special at Christmas time.

Since it was freezing at our house this weekend, we opted to stay indoors and bake like crazy. I found this cute cupcake idea at Family Fun magazine and we made it our own. The best part was making all the different expressions.

Image Jennifer Day

We baked devil’s food cupcakes, added brown frosting, and the following items for decorations:
Antlers: pretzels
Ears: tootsie rolls
Eyes: coconut m&m and black edible ink pen, but I ran out so we used some marshmallows cut in half and doted with black gel icing also.
Nose: mini nilla wafers and m&m’s